MY AMITYVILLE HORROR

You know the story behind THE AMITYVILLE HORROR - the family who made a fortune out of claiming their house had haunted them? The house where, a year earlier, an entire family had been gunned down in cold blood? Sure you do, and you'll know all about the various books etc that have attempted to debunk their claims since.

The subject of this documentary is Daniel Lutz. His "unfortunate gift", as he puts it, is that he was the kid of the family who lived briefly in 'that' house on Ocean Avenue in 1975.

Now a middle-aged father-of-two with no hair and a penchant for knocking out bad solos on his electric guitar, he speaks candidly to director Eric Walters' camera and explains that the events which shocked the world continue to haunt him to this day.

We follow him as he meets with a new psychologist, Dr Susan S Bartell, in a bid to exorcise his demons. She is the latest in a long line of quacks who have tried to help Daniel cope over the years. As he sits down, he's immediately on edge - bouncing on his seat, barely restraining aggression and turning the tables so he can fire questions at her. Small wonder that he's been through so many of these professional people.

Bartell seems sincere, however, and willing to persevere. We'll follow her progress as the film unravels.

Speaking directly to camera, Lutz takes us right back to his early pre-Amityville years and describes a happy, normal life. It's a stark contrast to his life post-Amityville, where he left home and turned his back on his mother in a bid to escape his reputation as that kid from the infamous "horror or hoax?" haunted house story.

Lutz gets clearly emotional, more animated, when discussing how life changed when his stepfather George turned up on the scene. Revealed in piecemeal manner throughout the film, Lutz expands further on how he resented George's existence and made his life Hell as a result.

But was Daniel a bad kid, capable of engineering an elaborate trick designed to scare the shit out of his new Dad? Investigative reporter Laura Didio thinks not. Although she remembers recognising the tension within the family when she interviewed them at the time of their scandal, she speaks generally favourably of the kid.

Didio is invited to meet the adult Daniel, at which point he tells her his memory of what happened remains just as vivid: "I wish I could get rid of it". She does make an interesting suggestion, though - to us, not him - that Daniel's memories may well be a mix of the real and the embellished, as kids' recollections of past events often are.

These people flit in and out of Lutz's life, all offering opinions but none really helping him to either conquer his demons or put his past into perspective.

As audio tapes of interviews with each family member are played, Daniel twitches as we hear tales of possession, people being touched by invisible hands, voices rising from the ether and so on...

Whether or not you believe that the Lutz family were genuinely haunted, it has to be said that Daniel does come across here as being disturbed. Whether it's because he was too young to understand the difference between hoax and horror, and wound up becoming inadvertently psychologically damaged, who knows? You do get a sense that he truly believes in the things he's telling the camera.

But, come the wrap-up, where Didio is suggesting Daniel blames George for the hauntings but really it's all about George stealing his mother from him, and Walter asks Daniel if he'd be prepared to take a lie detector test - and gets a very hostile response - you can't help but begin doubting the man again. Especially as we learn from the closing text how three more families have since lived in the house, and no paranormal activity has been reported since.

Nicely edited, well-paced and underpinned by a subtle score, MY AMITYVILLE HORROR follows recent documentaries such as THE IMPOSTER, presenting a startling true story in a manner that sometimes approaches drama.

Archive interview footage (both video and radio) with George and Daniel's mother Kathy are especially intriguing. More so, it has to be said, than Daniel's own accounts of what happened.

That being said, Daniel is the heart of the documentary and is a fascinatingly flawed, not entirely likeable character. He makes it compelling, to the point that the fact that his two younger siblings declined the opportunity of being interviewed for the film doesn't matter.

Perhaps there aren't enough easy answers for some. But MY AMITYVILLE HORROR will provoke discussion post-screening, just like all good factual films should.

Arrow's disc presents MY AMITYVILLE HORROR uncut and in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The picture is enhanced for 16x9 TVs.

Though this documentary relies at times on footage sourced from varying materials, and has a natural grittiness that attempts to pull you further in, the overall presentation is a satisfyingly crisp and clean one.

English audio comes in choices of 2.0 and 5.1. I couldn't really detect much discernible difference between the two, and ended up opting for the perfectly acceptable former option.

The disc opens to a subtly animated main menu page. This gains you access to a static scene-selection menu which boasts 12 chapters.

There are no bonus features, unless we count the trailer for THE CONSPIRACY which loads upon disc start-up.

MY AMITYVILLE HORROR makes for an interesting footnote to a particularly bizarre story from the 1970s, and would make for a meaty accompaniment to any future screenings of the classic Margot Kidder film.

Review by Stuart Willis